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Boston Researchers Are Trying to Grow Human Organs In Lab

Heart cells from a rat in Boston lab. Photo taken from CBS.com

Ali Khademhosseini, a Boston based researcher, along with a team of 50 more at Brigham and Women’s are working on an ambitious project to use human cells to grow working organs in a laboratory according to CBS.

The idea is to eventually eliminate, as the article puts it, “one of medicine’s greatest bottlenecks: the need for donors.”

According to OrganDonor.gov, there are 113,030 people waiting for an organ, 18 of which die a day.

Fully functional human organs engineered in a lab are still years away, but the project has shown promise in tests that utilized the heart cells from rats. According to the CBS report, the cells “now beat in sync on their own, after several weeks of nurturing in the lab.”

The article goes on to say that, “The cells are grown in a gel-like substance on a scaffold which helps realign and shape the tissue under conditions that closely replicate development in the human body.”

It’s incredible how the world of medicine tops itself on a daily basis. It is my hope, should I ever die, that it’s from falling from a height so immense and all of my organs become readily available, right there on the ground, for the paramedics to rush to the patients in need. Or to the lab to re-grow and make me a super scientific indestructible version of my former self, whatever is more pressing when the time comes.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/02/16/boston-researchers-are-trying-to-grow-human-or...

Boston Scores PAX East Through 2023; Mass Gaming Industry to Get the Shot in the Arm That it Needs

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray and MCCA Executive Director Jim Rooney (left) announced PAX East's commitment to the BCEC through 2023.

The massive PAX East gaming convention has a home at Boston Convention and Exhibition Center through 2023, Jim Rooney, Massachusetts Convention Center Authority’s executive director, announced this morning alongside a Lt. Governor Tim Murray and several representatives from the state’s video game industry.

Started in 2010, PAX East quickly developed into one of the city’s biggest attractions, while shining a spotlight on the state’s gaming industry. More than 70,000 people are expected to attend the event this year, scheduled for April 6-8.

“This is an event that’s helping making Boston and Massachusetts a center of the gaming universe,” Rooney said at the 10 a.m. news conference at the BCEC.

Speaking to the crowd alongside Rooney, Murray and MCCA Board Chair Michelle Shell were Becker College President Robert Johnson, also the board chair of the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute. MassDiGi’s executive director, Tim Loew, was also in attendance, along with Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council president Tom Hopcroft and Vice President of Operations at Turbine Games Ken Surdan.

All of the speakers representing the state’s government, entertainment, education and technology sectors made it clear they’d like PAX East’s 10-year commitment to Boston to be the shot in the arm for Massachusetts’ burgeoning gaming industry.

“This is where America began. If you think about the human spirit of building from the ground up, why not have PAX East here, right here in Boston?” Johnson said. “Why not have an industry that can grow and thrive in the commonwealth?”

MassDiGi was presented with a check for $325,000, to be paid for over the next decade, by PAX East

Johnson said he wants the institute to play a role in getting gaming companies, from startups to big firms, growing and thriving in the area. As part of its commitment to the BCEC, PAX East pledged today to donate $25,000 per year for the next 10 years to MassDiGi.

“Massachusetts is unlike a lot of other states,” MassDiGi’s Loew said. “We have that educational infrastructure, entrepreneurial spirit and the history of innovation that makes our state uniquely suited for game development. We are a brains and innovation state and this is a brains and innovation industry.”

There was no question PAX East would continue to draw thousands of visitors and boost the economy of the city during the convention. But in order to draw companies to not just New England, but Massachusetts, Lt. Gov. Murray said it would take state legislation to accelerate growth and keep outfits like Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios leaving for neighboring states. Turbine is owned by Warner Bros. and Zynga’s Boston offices are a legacy of its 2010 Conduit Labs buyout.

“PAX East is coming home to a state with growing companies like Turbine and top-ranked video game education institutions like Becker, WPI and MIT,” Murray said. “And it’s coming home to a state that wants to nurture and grow this industry.”

He said state legislation filed and led by Worcester representative John Mahoney could give tax breaks to gaming companies.

Greg Topalian, senior vice president for Reed Pop which helps put on PAX East, said the Boston community has welcomed the event since it was held in 2010 at Hynes Convention Center. Projected attendance figures for the three-day event are pegged at 70,000 people this year, although some would like to see that grow to 100,000 by 2023. Already, three-day passes are sold out.

While Massachusetts’ goal is to keep more gaming companies within its borders, Topalian, who also spoke at the news conference, said the goal isn’t to boost PAX East’s mass appeal for the sake of attendance.

“The show has never been about mass appeal, it’s for the gaming community,” Topalian said. “It’s a celebration of the gaming community.”

Photos/Zac Estrada

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/02/15/boston-scores-pax-east-through-2023-mass-gamin...

Pixable Brings the Hashtag to Facebook Photos


Photo-sorting app Pixable is bringing the Twitter-style hashtag to Facebook photos.

The startup’s core service sorts images from your Facebook and Twitter feeds into piles such as “Top of the Day,” “New on Twitter” and “New Profile Pics.” Now you can tag the photos in these categories with hashtags and see them in your Facebook Timeline.

A new Facebook Timeline integration will show activity on the app within modules on user timelines. Photos with hashtags show up in a separate module in your timeline that functions like an album collection organized by sentiment rather than event. Using the new feature, you can sort the photos you view on Pixable — from both you and your friends on Facebook and Twitter — into piles such as #cute, #nyc, #friends or #birthday both within the app and on your Facebook profile.

Other Pixable Facebook Timeline modules include a roundup of favorited photos each month and a general log of app activity.

So far about 1.5 million people have installed Pixable on their iPhones and 300,000 have installed it on their iPads. About 20% of them log in every day.

“People are treating this more like a photo inbox,” explains Pixable co-founder Andres Blank. “The photos that really matter come to you, you don’t have to go on a hunt.”

While focusing on photo consumption rather than broadcasting is what distinguishes Pixable from other photo apps, it also puts the app at a disadvantage when it comes to growing its numbers.

Hashtags are Pixable’s first broadcasting mechanism. When you add one to a photo, it can be Tweeted, Facebooked or shared with the rest of the community. Users can also browse public photos by hashtag.

More About: Facebook, Photos, Pixable

For more Business coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/02/16/pixable-hashtag-facebook-photos/?utm_source=fe...

ABC News Taps Bluefin Labs for Social Media Analysis in Upcoming Election

ABC News has enlisted the help of Boston based Bluefin Labs for their coverage of key nights during the upcoming election season according to an article on MediaBistro.com. The two companies will be able to accurately measure the sheer weight and volume of how people, viewers like you and I, react to television coverage of the 2012 election based on the things we post on our favorite social media platforms.

Here’s a bit from the article that will explain what the collaboration means:

“Bluefin Labs technology…provides a real-time view into social media conversations about TV – volume of social buzz, topics of conversation, sentiment and trends. This technology allows ABC to tap into voters’ reactions and bring TV viewers into the conversation like never before.”

According to the article, ABC will utilize social media posts and comments, analytics and data visualizations in addition to their regular coverage of Super Tuesday, the presidential and vice presidential debates, the Republican and Democratic conventions, Election Night and the inauguration.

This could ultimately make social media every bit as important to ABC’s coverage as the election itself. No longer will the anchor have the only word.

As we’ve seen in just the past two weeks with the Grammy Awards and the Super Bowl, Social TV is the norm now. We are a two-screen nation. We tweet while we watch and vice versa.

Politicians can dwell on the black skies all they want. We live on a different cloud.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/02/15/abc-taps-bluefin-labs-for-social-media-analysi...

Time Warner Cable targets end of March for live TV on Android, MyTWC on iOS now

Time Warner Cable promised live TV streaming would make the leap from iOS to Android devices after Ice Cream Sandwich rolled out, and now Director of Digital Communication Jeff Simmermon tweets that it could go live by the end of March. That's described as a "very loose" date however, so don't get your Tab's and Nexus' hopes up to high just yet. This comes just after it launched a beta for live TV streaming to PCs, and on the same day the company revealed the formerly Android-exclusive MyTWC app for iOS. It handles more mundane tasks like bill payment, call forwarding and voicemail, but interested subscribers can grab the free app from iTunes at the link below.

Time Warner Cable targets end of March for live TV on Android, MyTWC on iOS now originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashgear  |  sourceiTunes, TW Cable Untangled, @jeffTWC (Twitter)  | Email this | Comments

from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/15/time-warner-cable-targets-end-of-march-for...

Twitter Tool Will Help Journalists Break News [VIDEO]

A new software tool will help journalists see breaking news tweets as they are happening. The program, called Seriously Rapid Source Review, is still under development — but will act like a sieve that pull tweets from key sources currently sharing reports, images and video from the ground.

Researchers at Rutgers University and Microsoft developed Seriously Rapid Source Review to give journalists access to breaking news like never before. Reporters won’t have to comb the web — or Twitter’s 200 million tweets a day — for sources.

Nick Diakopoulos, one of the project’s authors, stated in a blog post that the program was built to deal with how much news is breaking on social media these days. Its features should help journalists distinguish accurate and trustworthy sources.

SRSR features include automatic identification of eyewitnesses with approximate 89% precision and will list users in various archetypes — journalists, bloggers, organizations or unaffiliated citizens.

To avoid a false tweet problem, such as the preemptive report of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno’s death in January, SRSR will use context clues to assess the verity and credibility on sources based on their Twitter profiles. The program will determine where a person says they are, plus look at the locations of friends and followers within a source’s network.

Another component will look at the top five most mentioned companies, people or places mentioned in someone’s feed.

The SRSR culls data from Twitter profiles, user-provided descriptions, data from follower and following lists. A report based on a search term will compile the sources sharing tweets that match the search terms.

SEE ALSO: How Whitney Houston News Broke — and Exploded — on Twitter

The SRSR is still in its development stage. The researchers have not used been able to use real-time Tweets because of limitations in applying the Twitter API. For this project researchers used pre-collected and processed data from Twitter.

As for using the current prototype to catch the first couple tweets about Whitney Houston’s death, Diakopoulos tells The Poynter Institute, it’s unlikely that SRSR would have caught the very first tweets. Future developments, however, can lead to these connections.

Tell us in the comments if you personally take steps to verify tweets before retweeting or reporting news.

[via Poynter]

More About: journalism, Social Media, social networking, Twitter


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/02/15/seriously-rapid-source-review/?utm_source=feed...

Chris Brown Isn’t Dead, But His Twitter Handle Almost Is


Despite the fact that #RIPChrisBrown has become a Twitter trending topic, the hip-hop artist is alive and well Wednesday. His Twitter account seems to be wasting away, however, with all but four tweets deleted.

Brown caused controversy on Twitter since his performance at the Grammys. Although Brown was one of the most talked-about celebrities that evening, trending topics such as #wifebeater suggested the reasons were mostly negative.

Other celebrities, such as Miranda Lambert, Michelle Branch and Will Wheaton also raised their eyebrows at the Grammys’ choice of performer.

Brown responded to the hate with a strongly worded tweet.

Just minutes later, Brown attempted to delete all evidence of his tantrum on Twitter. We captured the offending tweet, however, while eagle-eyed reader Andy Smigelski captured the entire stream of tweets from Tuesday night, all of which have since been deleted. Check them out below.

Twitter users responded to Brown’s behavior by making “#RIPChrisBrown” a trending topic. Earlier this morning, the account retweeted talk show host Wendy Williams, who asked if this sort of behavior warranted a Grammy. The response to Williams’ question has been mixed, from “give it a rest already” to “based on talent YES.”


Hot Question: Do you think Chris Brown deserved to win a Grammy Award based on his past behavior?

— Wendy Williams (@WendyWilliams) February 15, 2012

Brown has since taken back his retweet of Williams, and there are now only four visible tweets attached to his account, including a link to his new music video.

This is not the first tantrum we’ve seen from the artist, who deleted his account in 2009 after accusing retailers of blackballing him and not giving his album proper space.

Brown’s newest tweet to his followers expresses a different tune: “Be Happy.”


Be HAPPY!

— Chris Brown(@chrisbrown) February 15, 2012

If you were Chris Brown’s publicist, how would you handle this situation? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

More About: chris brown, Entertainment, grammys, trending, Twitter

For more Entertainment coverage:


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/02/15/rip-chris-brown/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_med...

How Whitney Houston News Broke — and Exploded — on Twitter


Following much speculation about which Twitter user first broke the news about the death of Whitney Houston, the site has unveiled new data that indicates one member alluded to the news only seven minutes after police pronounced the singer dead.

Twitter revealed the first message posted about Houston’s death was made at 4:02 p.m. by user @BarBeeBritt, AKA Brittany J. Pullard. Her message was sent 55 minutes before the Associated Press confirmed Houston’s death, citing her publicist. The Beverly Hills Police said on Saturday night that Houston was pronounced dead at approximately 3:55 p.m. PT.


Is Whitney Houston really dead?

— Brittany J pullard (@BarBeeBritt) February 12, 2012

Twitter also included a link to an image in its tweet that features a timeline chart of the first users to reference the news. The second Twitter user to mention her death was the niece of Houston’s hairstylist @AjaDiorNavy at 4:15 p.m. and @ChileMasGrande at 4:30 p.m. The Associated Press’s breaking news alert came in at 4:57 p.m.


omgg , my aunt tiffany who work for whitney houston just found whitney houston dead in the tub . such ashame & sad

— Aja Dior M. (@AjaDiorNavy) February 12, 2012

My sources say Whitney Houston found dead in Beverly hills hotel.. Not in the news yet!!

— Big Chorizo (@chilemasgrande) February 12, 2012

BREAKING: Publicist Kristen Foster says singer Whitney Houston has died at age 48

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 12, 2012

When Mashable reached out to @ChileMasGrande — who then had only 14 followers and now has more than 400 — to learn how he got the tip, he tweeted: ” #just a ordinary dude who got a text message from a family member of Whitney Houston and I tweeted it.. #enjoyingthefame no further comment.”

@BarBeeBritt couldn’t be reached for comment as of press time.

SEE ALSO: Twitter Breaks News of Whitney Houston Death 27 Minutes Before Press

The tragic news of Houston’s death spread fast on Twitter. In fact, about 2.5 million tweets and retweets occurred in the first hour, amounting to more than 1,000 tweets a second, according to Topsy Labs. Although this sent Twitter into a flurry of reactions, it still wasn’t enough to beat last Sunday’s Super Bowl record-breaking tweets.

The Associated Press’s message was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet from @BarBeeBritt was only retweeted three times, according to Media Bistro, and the message from @ChileMasGrande was only retweeted once.

This isn’t the first time news a large-scale death announcement was first reported on Twitter. A computer programmer in Pakistan inadvertently live-tweeted the military raid on the Osama bin Laden compound. “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 a.m. (is a rare event),” Athar wrote. His message later received global media attention following the news of bin Laden’s death.

However, death announcements on Twitter are not always accurate, as evidenced most recently by Bon Jovi death rumors and the too-early death claims of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.

More About: Social Media, trending, Twitter

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/02/15/whitney-houston-death-twitter/?utm_source=feed...

Pinterest, Meet Arab Spring: Clone Site Collects Videos of Protest

arab spring thumb


News website Middle East Voices has created a digital forum for footage from Arab Spring protests, focusing on Bahrain — and the result looks very much like hot startup Pinterest.

Lulu Live, launched on the one year anniversary of Feb. 14 protests in Bahrain, is a grassroots social journalism site, curated by Middle East Voices editors. Lulu is the square in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, where protesters have continuously assembled throughout the last year, functioning — much like Cairo’s Tahrir Square — as a meeting place for revolutionaries.

The site is both a space for Bahrainis to see and exchange media and a resource for the site’s English language audience to get a grasp on the situation. The site avoids featuring edited video clips in order to provide non-biased coverage and to allow viewers to make their own conclusions.

“This is a way to document the protests in a way they weren’t a year ago,” Devin Hutchins, managing editor of Middle East Voices, told Mashable. “We want to create a site through the hashtag #lulu to show what they’re witnessing throughout the country and turn this around very quickly.”

Middle East Voices started with Bahrain’s protests because, according to Hutchins, Bahrainis are the site’s largest audience and are incredibly social media savvy. One post over the weekend garnered more than 50,000 visits, mostly from Bahrain. A separate poll on divisions within the country received more than 15,000 online votes. Two-thirds of traffic from Bahrain comes from iPhones — according to Hutchins’s Google Analytics — which are the very devices many protesters are using to shoot and upload video.

LULU LIVE

The site, built on Tumblr, mimics Pinterest‘s popular layout — featuring small rectangular elements — which has been resurfacing widely across the web. Videos and photos are arranged chronologically.

SEE ALSO: 7 Pinterest Clones: Can You Tell the Difference?

Middle East Voices hosts other multimedia social journalism initiatives, such as an interactive map of deaths in Syria. Hutchins says there are more projects to come following Lulu Live’s launch. Middle East Voices itself is relatively new, launched Nov. 13 by Voices of America as a social journalism project.

Do you think Lulu Live is a good way to monitor the situation in Bahrain? What countries do you think future projects should spotlight? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Arab Spring, pinterest, web design

For more Media coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/02/14/lulu-live-arab-spring/?utm_source=feedburner&u...

Tic Tac Launches Augmented Reality-Enabled Times Square Billboards


Tic Tac is the latest major brand to embrace augmented reality, and it is doing so in a big way: With three billboards in New York’s Times Square.

The billboards are the latest element of Tic Tac’s “Shake It Up” campaign, which centers around a mobile app (for iOS or Android) that offers extras beyond the outdoor and print ads. For instance, a print ad noting that “84% of People Always Sleep on the Same Side of the Bed,” leads to a mobile game where you roll a man from one side of the bed to the other and avoid falling objects. A bar coaster that talks about using the same pickup lines over and over can also be AR-enhanced to offer some new ones. (See video below.)

The billboards, meanwhile, appear as personalized ads with you at the center when AR-enhanced. The resulting images, which appear to be pictures of you in Times Square, can also be sent to friends via Facebook.

Tic Tac’s AR campaign comes after a raft of brands rolled out campaigns featuring the technology this year. Although some, including Starbucks and Guinness tried their hand at AR last year, so far in 2012, there have been a bunch more, including: Taco Bell, SKYN condoms, Mattel’s Barbie and Starbucks again.

Meanwhile, Times Square has proven to be irresistible to marketers seeking to try out new technologies. Domino’s Pizza, for instance, ran unedited comments from customers culled from its Tracker app last year in Times Square, while Facebook is running a campaign that offers the chance to appear on a Times Square billboard if you share your thoughts on the 2012 election. American Eagle also ran a location-based effort with SCVNGR in late 2010.

What do you think? Will the AR trend continue to grip Madison Avenue? Sound off in the comments.

More About: Augmented Reality, Tic Tac

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/02/14/tic-tac-augmented-reality-times-square-billboa...